What a busy couple of months! We have been picking up, re-arranging, re-building, adding onto and re-fencing! The goats have been moved and/or expanded 3 times now and we are in the process of getting ready to finish off the pig pen and build a new chicken coop!

I don't know if you have ever heard of "chicken math" but boy has it taken over my brain! After receiving our first order of chicks from Ideal Poultry I decided to place another order for the end of this month to get some more variety for our daughter to do chicken 4-H with this fall. My goal is to have 30-40 laying hens, and if all the chicks we have now stay hens, as well as the ones coming the end of this month, we will have a total of 40 hens, 30 of which will be good layers and 10 --well, after my daughter picks her favorites, hopefully 5 (after placing the rest in other homes) -- will be more along the lines of pets and broodies. That is "chicken math" for ya!If you ever need some chicken advise or just want to 'hang' with a bunch of chicken-crazy peeps, I can't say enough about Backyardchickens.com. It has a wonderful learning center and forum for all of us who are chicken obsessed.We should be receiving the new batch on the 27th of July, which is hopefully enough time to build the new coop and get the current brood out of the house!

I can hear the peeping and cheeping in the other room as I sit here typing. It is a sound that warms my soul, brings back wonderful memories from when my Mom used to order and we would raise chicks, and is one more step towards my dream actually becoming reality!